
Gass 1 -- '-- ^3- 



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ROSES 


an</RAIN 


ANNIE LA URIE 



Roses -anc/- Rain 7^ 

Annie • Laurie 




Annie Laurie Series 



Published by the Author 
762-766 Mission Street 
San Francisco, Calif. 






Copyright 1920 
By W. B. Bonfils 






PRINTED BY 

WALTER N. BRUNT 

7«2 - 766 MISSION ST. 

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 

1920 

JAN 31 192! 



The sketches in this little book are reprinted 
by the courtesy and kindness of the San Fran- 
cisco Examiner. 

Let's sit down together and think again of the 
roses and rain, the sunshine and fog, the wild 
wind and deep peace, the joyous beauty and 
proud generosity that is — California. 



\/l/(AyUyU^ (A^C 



OiAjy^Aji 



ROSES AND RAIN 



ROSES AND RAIN. 

Last night we sat in the quiet room — a few 
friends together — and heard the wind ratthng 
the palm leaves outside in the garden, like some 
ghostly senorita clicking a pair of invisible caste- 
nets in tune to some haunting rhythm. 

The fire burned on the hearth, a fire of eucalyp- 
tus logs, with now and then a branch of aromatic 
leaves, flaming suddenly into leaping life and 
filling the room with their pungent and somehow 
exotic perfume. 

We put out the bright lights from the center 
of the room, and let the shadows fall from the 
little gleaming lamps that are like fire-flies, flit- 
ting in the dusk like so many swiftly passing 
thoughts and pleasant memories. 

There we were, the young couple so dead in 
love with each other, and so full of the joy of 
living. Sweet Sixteen, a little terrified at her 
vague glimpse of life — Twenty-one, virile and 
modest and somehow eagerly hopeful. 

The Home Woman, the Woman of the World, 
the Artist, the Genius, the Singer and the Priest. 
A strange company, strangely mixed, and yet 



ROSES AND RAIN 



there we sat in the quiet little room — together, 
like passengers on a raft picked up from the wild 
sea and held together by some strange accident 
of fate. 

We talked, not of politics, not of war or of 
diplomacy — not even of the high cost of living, 
or of the effect of the vote upon women. 

We talked of books and poetry, and of music, 
and one told a quaint little story of a wounded 
pigeon, and the rescue of it, and the fire burned 
and the wind sang, and gradually the stress of 
the world and the anxiety and restless, uneasy 
ambition of it fell from us like an outworn cloak. 
And there we were, like little children, talking 
together in the twilight of some great primeval 
forest. 

And one sang — a simple song of love and 
memory and tears. 

"Roses and rain" and the artist smiled, and the 
Woman of the World sighed, and there were 
tears in the eyes of the Home Woman. 

The Genius it was who sang — and the Singer 
sat by the fire and listened. 

The Young Wife's hand stole to the hand of 



ROSES AND RAIN 



her Husband, and the Priest sat Hke one in a deep 
reverie. Was he thinking of. the roses that 
bloomed in the dooryard of his home across the 
sea, and the fragrance of them in the sweet June 
rain ? 

And we didn't care who was elected or who 
was defeated, and somewhere, far down in the 
city below, the boys were calling extras, extra — 
extra — all about something or other very impor- 
tant, which concerned us not in the very least. 

And the Singer was generous, and poured out 
for us like a libation on the altar of friendship his 
voice of molten silver — French songs he sang 
full of the quick and glancing grace of a fountain 
leaping in the moonlight. German lieder, simple 
and brooding, like the lullabies a mother sings 
to her child. Italian, too, he sang, and the room 
glowed with the fire and the passion of the melt- 
ing music of Italy. 

"Eileen AUana" — ^how he sang it — the simple 
old ballad, and how we drank every lilting note of 
it, like thirsty travelers in a dry and arid desert. 

And so the quiet evening spent itself, and at 
the end she sang again, the woman with the 



8 ROSES AND RAIN 

strange dark eyes — "Roses and Rain" — and we 
were one with the sunshine and the dew and 
knew again the sweet and rapturous pang of 
youth and moonHght and the mystery of the stars. 
"Roses and Rain" — the wind in the palm trees, 
the fire on the hearth, dear faces in the soft dim- 
ness of the quiet room. What is there sweeter, 
what more beautiful, what more to be gained in 
life than these ? 



ROSES AND RAIN 



COME HOME, CARELESS LOVE. 

"Come home, Careless Love — oh, do come home ! 

ril weep like a willow, and Til mourn like a 

dove. 
Come home, Careless Love — oh, do come home." 

Careless Love has gone — far and far he flew 
out of the garden, over the wall, past the great 
eucalyptus, up and up, higher and higher, his 
wings flashed in the sun, he turned toward the 
shining water, and like a flash he was gone. 

And in the cage that stands on the garden wall 
his mate sits on the perch and mourns for him — 
"Poo-roo," she says, "Poo-roo," and will not be 
comforted — ^no, not by rice, or by corn, or even 
by wheat, no matter how daintily it is scattered. 

"Poo-roo — Poo-roo,'' and what is there on 
earth that can mourn so musically as a ring dove 
mourning for her mate? 

There were four of them the other day. We 
brought them home from the great, broad acres 
in the warm country. 

They lived in a netted enclosure, just back of 
the chicken yard — the mourning doves and the 
pouter pigeons and the fan-tails. And how they 



10 ROSES AND RAIN 

did strut and preen and turn their glossy necks 
from side to side to catch every angle of the sun- 
light. They were named — the most of them. It 
was a little cruel perhaps to call the pouter pigeon 
"J. Hamilton Lewis" — and whoever named that 
gray little dove "Mrs. Pankhurst" ? We stood in 
the shade and watched them for hours, the pretty, 
graceful, gracious creatures. And when we went 
away the generous giver of a generous day 
loaded us down with presents and in one package 
was a box and in that box were the four doves. 

"Dinna ye mind the cushat dooes at Inverquar- 
ity?" That was the message she sent to her old 
sweetheart, the poor woman dying in cruel Lon- 
don, far away from her girlhood's home. 

"Dinna ye mind the cushat dooes Aaron 
Latta?" and Aaron Latta minded and came up 
to London and took the forlorn children the 
dying woman left behind her and gave them a 
home, all because of the woman who had stood 
with him on a fairing day and listened to the 
mourning of the cushat doves. 

I thought of her all the way home, the poor 
woman who died in London, and of the faithful 



ROSES AND RAIN 11 

sweetheart who came to help her when she 
minded him of the mourning doves — pretty 
things, pretty, graceful, gentle things. We made 
them a little house out of a great box and set 
them high upon the wall in the scarlet and green 
of the geraniums. 

And one we named "Careless Love" and one 
we named "Poor Soul" and one we called, oh, the 
light-mindedness of youth in these strange days 
of ours — "Oo-Long," and the other "So-Long." 

And we scattered grain and set clear, cool 
water and went into the house and planned the 
building of an old world dove-cote high on a tall 
pole, with little doors and windows — a door for 
"Poor Soul" and one for "Careless Love" and 
one for "Oo-Long" and one for "So-Long." And 
then we all went to sleep and dreamed of carrier 
doves and sweet messages sent from far seas. 
But in the morning when we went to feed the 
little visitors, one of them edged close to the door, 
and, wh-rrr, before you could catch your breath, 
he was gone. 

He lit for a moment in the weeping willow 
tree, stopped an instant to catch bearings and 



13 ROSES AND RAIN 

then as straight as an arrow, away he went 
across the bay, in the exact direction of the broad 
acres from which he came. 

I'm expecting every minute to hear from the 
generous giver, he who gathers forlorn children 
around him and protects them and makes them 
happy — I wonder if they will recognize "Careless 
Love," the little city boys out there in the country 
for their vacation, and bid him welcome, and put 
him back in the enclosure with "J. Hamilton 
Lewis" and "Mrs. Pankhurst" ? 

And will "Careless Love" be a great hero, 
returned from the wars, and will he tell them 
fine tales of his wild adventures, and will he 
mourn for "Poor Soul," or will he find another 
mate and forget all about her? 

And now what to do about "Oo-Long" and 
"So-Long?" Shall we dare to build the dove-cote 
and put them in it ? Will they stay with us if we 
do, or will they rise high in the air and strike a 
straight course over to "Careless Love" and the 
pouter pigeon and the fan-tails ? 

We would take such good care of them, if only 
they would stay with us. They should have the 



ROSES AND RAIN 13 

whole world to fly in by day, if only they would 
come back at night, and in the morning, and at 
twilight, mourn just a little for us over the sor- 
rows of the world and ease by their music the 
aching of some lonely heart. 

Must we shut them in some hateful enclosure 
— just to protect them from the wild beasts and 
the dangers of their little world, or — 

Now, I know the meaning of the expression in 
the eyes of the little mother who cannot make up 
her mind whether to keep her daughter "safe'' 
and caged at home or let her seek freedom — and 
peril — abroad. 

"Come home. Careless Love — oh, do come 
home." "Poor Soul" is watching for you. 



14 ROSES AND RAIN 

UP THE SAN JOAQUIN. 

The Harvest Moon — how big and round and 
red it is when it first rises — and how it floods the 
dull, old, everyday world with silver when it is 
high in the sky ! 

Where have you seen it this time? 

Out at the Beach — with the great waves roll- 
ing in and rolling in — looking like rows and rows 
of prancing horses tossing their white manes for 
the very joy of living? In the Park, with the tall 
eucalyptus throwing their ragged shadows on 
the ground like beggars playing dice against time 
and laughing in the wind to lose their stakes? 
Out at Land's End, with the light darting across 
from the Light House as an inspiration flashes 
upon the brain and the dark hills of Marin shoul- 
dering up as if some jealous giant had built him 
a fortress to shut out even the envious glances of 
a wistful world ? 

I saw my Harvest Moon up the San Joaquin — 
what a country ! Have you been there of late ? 

I hadn't — and I thought of it as a kind of low, 
level stretch of flat country, with nothing much to 
relieve the monotony save the silver river creep- 



ROSES AND RAIN 15 

ing in and out among the shadows. But, dear 
me, they've been doing things in the San Joaquin 
— ^big things, I suppose — ^but what I noticed most 
were the fields and fields and fields of ripening 
melons — millions of them, striped and russet and 
fragrant. Why, you could feed an army on 
melons and never even touch the San Joaquin 
crop. And the figs — orchards of the great, 
broad, generous trees that always make me think 
of an old-fashioned grandmother with plenty of 
room in her capacious lap for all the grandchil- 
dren and a few of the neighbors' children too. 
How beneficient and kindly they are — the fig 
trees laden to the ground with their rich harvest. 
Olives, too, and late peaches. The air is heavy 
with the richness and the sweetness and the 
promise of the ripe fruit. Talk about the Gar- 
den of Eden — if Adam had ever seen California 
in September or early October he wouldn't have 
cared a cent about that flaming sword — ^not if 
he could have found an airship to get down here 
— not he. 

And as for Eve — what a country for a woman 
it is — Cailfornia. Not too clear, the beckoning 



16 ROSES AND RAIN 

distances; not too sharp the outlines — curved, 
gracious, gentle, smiling — so are the quiet hills 
dressed in their autumn yellow. 

And, oh, the fields of the San Joaquin ! What- 
ever is that little, waving, yellow blossom there — 
that holds up its gay head so late in the year, as 
if it were the Spring and all the birds were mat- 
ing? The fields themselves are primrose colored 
— so delicate they are. But the miles and miles 
of waving flowers are almost orange — and 
there's a rich perfume about them like mandrakes 
ripening in the sun. What can they be ? 

And then the miles of vivid blue — who are 
they? — the wistful strangers who have taken 
possession of the rich lands near the river, now 
that the crops are over — blue and blue — the deep, 
clear blue of sapphires. They have a poignant, 
heavy flavor in their haunting perfume — some- 
thing that is like the bouquet of a fine, old white 
wine. And what is that pungent, aromatic scent 
that haunts the air like a spirit? Why, it's mint 
— wild mint all along the river bank, growing 
under the willows and the quaking aspens. 



ROSES AND RAIN 1^ 

Look! There's a storm breaking somewhere. 
See how the sun draws water, and how red the 
angry clouds rise upon the horizon ! What's that 
in the distance? Snow, and plenty of it — on the 
peaks — ^you can feel the tang of it in the air. 

Look! There she rises — the Harvest Moon — 
serene, generous — a queen among moons, smil- 
ing, well-content. 

Come, come — not so matronly, Madame Moon, 
if you please. We know you love the perfume of 
the harvest fields, and we rejoice with you at the 
abundance of the garnered vintages. 

But we look to you for romance, for fancy — 
for a magic veil of silver to soften the rough 
edges of a too practical world. 

Ah ! it smiles again, the argent mystery of the 
moonlight — and all the rustling night is silver 
and amethyst — and far and far a dog barks, and 
some sheep fold stirs, and even the cattle feel the 
spell of it, and move restlessly in their accus- 
tomed places. 

What the river, the Stanislaus — the fork of it 
for the mountain climb? What is it he said — 
the poet — of some one who breasted high water 



18 ROSES AND RAI N 

and swam the North Fork and all, just to dance 
with old Follansby's daughter, the "Lily of Pov- 
erty Flat"? Ah, well, no wonder he swam the 
North Fork — who wouldn't want to dance in 
such a country under such a moon as this ? 



ROSES AND RAIN 19 

THE DANCING FIRE. 

The other evening it was chilly. A great 
cloud rolled up from the west and there was rain, 
and right in the midst of summer sturdy autumn 
thrust his head in at the window and laughed to 
see us shiver. 

And I sent the children out for some wood and 
we built a fire in the fireplace and made a great 
pitcher of chocolate and had some thin bread and 
butter and little cakes, and we sat by the fire and 
laughed and sang and told stories. Old stories, 
about witches and ghosts and goblins and where 
the wood came from that we burned. 

Pine, from great forests in the high Sierras, 
where the snow falls and the wind howls all win- 
ter, tamaracks from the swamps near the sea, 
and redwood from the great groves that are like 
cathedrals. 

Applewood from the old trees in some half- 
forgotten orchard. Who planted it, I wonder — 
the bride or the groom ? The orchard grew close 
to the door on the old place, there in the hills. A 
branch of willow — did this come from "Haunted 
Pond,'' where the old-fashioned water lilies grow 



20 



ROSES AND RAIN 



and where it is so still and mysterious at twi- 
light? 

Eucalyptus — ah, there's California for you — 
Oregon, Georgia, Maine — what a storehouse of 
memories an old wood box can sometimes be! 

Of mermaids we talked, and sprites and pixies, 
and gnomes and the little folk of Ireland, and 
brownies and the tree people, who live in the 
trunks of trees, and elves and fairies, and wish- 
ing rings and traveling carpets, and invisible 
cloaks — don't you know the kind you put on 
when you want to walk abroad and not let any 
one see you? — and wishbones and magic wells. 
Oh, we had a lovely time, sitting in the twilight 
by the light of a dancing fire ! 

And suddenly one of our number laughed 
aloud, and then she caught her breath and sighed. 

"Look !" she said. "Out of the window !" We 
looked, and there, reflected on the clear pane, was 
the dancing fire, brighter, wilder, more leaping 
than the one on the hearth. 

"When fire outside burns merrily, there the 
witches are making tea," she quoted. 



ROSES AND RAIN ^ 

And we laughed and looked and wondered. 

It was so real with its dancing flames — so full 
of life and vitality, it didn't seem possible that it 
was nothing but a reflection. Was that some one 
standing beside it, smiling through the window 
at us, with, oh, that unf orgotten smile ? 

Proud head, rosy cheeks, clear eyes, and, oh, 
the honest, boyish love in them. Did they see it, 
the others who looked with me ? 

No, no ; that vision was for me alone. 

For an instant it paused, turned, smiled, and 
with love and yearning tenderness in every ges- 
ture looked back and was gone. 

How he used to love to see the fire burning out- 
side in the cool night — ^he loved the fire on the 
hearth, too, but he would leave it any time to 
stand and watch the gay reflection that was like 
some vagrant spirit, leaping, calling, beckoning 
him — whither ? 

And now he is gone and does not sit with us 
by the fire and cannot tell the quaint stories that 
he loved. But, perhaps — is it possible, I wonder 
— that when the fire leaps upon the hearth of his 
old home, he is permitted for an instant to come 



^ ROSES AND RAIN 

and stand by the phantom flames that intrigued 
his imagination so deeply, and smile and look in 
upon us for just an instant? 

How can we know ? How shall we ever know ? 

Fragrant pine, clear flames of redwood, strange 
incense of the eucalyptus — ah, call him back 
again just for one sweet moment ! 

So you wait outside the door, do you, bluff Sir 
Autumn, with your followers in red and gold, the 
heaped vintage of your harvest purple and yellow 
and crimson — ^you bring chill and frost and 
brown quiet for all the growing things. But, oh, 
you bring, too, the dancing fire ! 

And so, with warm hearts, we will welcome 
you when it is your time to come. 



ROSES AND RAIN S3 

PASSIN' THROUGH. 

He's out in the garden — this very minute — the 
Mysterious Stranger. 

Night before last I heard him just at sunset 
calHng from the top of the tallest eucalyptus tree 
in the neighborhood. 

"Happy days," he cried, "happy, happy, happy 
d-a-y-s !" 

I went out on the porch with the opera glass 
and tried my best to see him — did he notice me, 
and was he laughing to think of a being so dull 
of the senses that such a thing as an opera glass 
was necessary anywhere, any time? 

He sounded as if he did, for there was a dis- 
tinct chuckle at the end of the next "happy," and 
something like a friendly giggle in the "days." 

I watched and watched, and the eucalyptus 
tree turned from electric blue to dull green in the 
changing light of the sunset hour and then to 
deep and melancholy purple, and then almost to 
black with a fringe of silver along the edges, and 
the Mysterious Stranger laughed and called and 
sang and hurrahed and cheered and sighed and 
almost sobbed — and then was silent. 



^4 ROSES AND RAIN 

But never once could I catch the faintest 
glimpse of him. 

The other birds seemed to stop singing and 
listen to him — I wonder if he was "Mysterious 
Stranger" to them or some old friend or ancient 
enemy paying them a flying visit for old times' 
sake ? 

Yesterday morning he was there again — high 
and high in the eucalyptus, calling, calling before 
the morning mist was fairly cleared away. 

"Happy, happy days," he cried gayly, "happy 
d-a-y-s!" 

"Come," said I to the Brown Girl whose black 
eyes, soft and brilliant and clear as a brown pool 
in the deep forest, can see farther than any pair 
of human eyes I ever knew. 

Light-footed, swift and silent as was her 
grandmother, the Cherokee — the Brown Girl 
came and stood in the porch and watched and 
watched. 

But even she could not catch sight of him — 
though he called louder than ever and again 
appeared to be laughing at some huge joke all 
his own. 



ROSES AND RAIN ^ 

The Brown Girl leaned against the rail of the 
porch and her many beads chimed together like 
the voice of quick waters running over the stones. 

"Passin' through/' said the Brown Girl, half 
to herself and half to me. "J^st passin' through 
—that's all." 

And so we've named him now, the Mysterious 
Stranger, Passin' Through — ^but we do not know 
who he is or where he came from or whither he 
is bound; we don't even know how he looks or 
what his real name is in the bird book — all we 
know is that from some aerial height he spied our 
little garden and chose to rest here for a while — 
on his way. 

How does he know where he is going, anyway ; 
who drew the map of his course for him, who 
told him to turn here and vary there and rise at 
such a time and descend at another ? 

Does the whole country lie beneath him like a 
map and does he spy out rivers and towns and 
mountains — can he hear the calling of the wild 
sea up there and steer his course by it ? 

What a miracle it is, the migration of the birds 
— and yet we are so used to it we never even 



£6 ROSES AND RAIN 

notice it to comment on its wonder and on its 
mystery. 

The other day out on the edge of the Httle 
fountain there perched all at once a wee brown 
bird — a cozy, comfortable, motherly, friendly, 
soft creature — and when she began to sing we 
knew her name, for she said it over and over as 
if she were trying to introduce herself. 

'Thoebe, Phoebe," said the little brown bird — 
and the children next door laughed aloud and 
called to each other "Phoebe's here for a day 
or so." 

And those same children and any one of the 
rest of us would spend a precious hour almost 
any time standing among the dupes to watch 
^ome trickster perform some "mystery," and 
think ourselves wise and deep — to wonder and 
speculate and try to guess how the magic was 
wrought. 

Yet all around us every day are the great mir- 
acles of life, and of death, and of love, and of 
faith, and of loyalty that no time and no space 
and no absence can ever change. 



ROSES AND RAIN '^^ 

Happy, Happy days — good luck to you 
Passin' Through, whoever you are and wher- 
ever you came from and wherever you are going. 

Perhaps your brother or your cousin or even 
the wife that is to be of your winged bosom, sings 
your gay song of challenge and of cheer over 
some low grave in Flanders this very day. 

And maybe some American, homesick and 
lonely for his native sights and sounds, will hear 
the song from his hospital cot, or from his tent 
in camp, and smile and think cheerfully of home 
and those who love^him here. 



^8 ROSES AND RAIN 

OH! PROMISE ME. 

I knew a little tree once, a cypress it was. 

Slender and dark and straight, like an Indian 
youth, and it grew in a little sunny garden here 
in San Francisco. 

He planted it, the little boy who was the beat 
of our hearts. And because we got it down the 
coast, in the place of the mysterious trees, he 
called it "Monterey." 

He planted it on his birthday, and every morn- 
ing he watered it, and every Saturday he meas- 
ured its growth with his hand and was a little 
wistful when he found that the tree grew faster 
than he. 

But the house with the sunny garden was old 
and a new one was built and those who moved 
into the new house took "Monterey'' with them. 
Something happened in the moving, and although 
the tree was carefully replanted it did not thrive. 

The dark foliage faded and the tree began to 
droop. 

The little boy could not bear to see this and 
every night after he had watered the trees and 
his bedtime came he slipped to his knees and 



ROSES AND RAIN 29 

prayed for "Monterey" to live and keep on grow- 
ing with him. For, after all, he was a very little 
boy and he loved the tree very dearly. 

But one day the gardener said : "Why not dig 
up this old tree — it is dead?'' 

And so it was. There was no longer any use 
of denying it. But the little boy grieved and 
begged them to give "Monterey" a chance. And 
the wind blew chill out of the fog, and the little 
boy drooped and smiled and said "Good-bye" and 
when he was gone the new house was empty. 

Strangers who came to live there dug up 
"Monterey" and threw the dead trunk and life- 
less branches on a bonfire. 

But those whose hearts ached with loneliness 
went down the coast to the country of mysterious 
trees and found a brother to "Monterey" and 
planted it at the head of a little grave. 

This tree did not die — it grows and grows, tall 
and slender, and dark, like an Indian youth. 

The white rose that blossoms on the cross that 
marks the resting place of the dear, dear little boy 
is sweet and fair, and the violets which bloom 



30 ROSES AND RAIN 

there in the season are fragrant and lovely to see, 
but the dark tree is the best beloved of all. 

It grows and grows and seems, somehow, to 
remember. 

What tree do you remember, in all your life, 
the best ? 

There were two great maples in the yard when 
I was a little girl. They were landmarks for all 
the countryside, but to me they were just the 
place where my brother hung my swing. 

There are two great cottonwoods that whisper, 
night and day, in a certain place I know, far from 
here. And up in the high Sierras there is a tall 
sugar pine. 

Oh, I would know it in a grove of a thousand 
brothers. I could find it, although I walked 
blindfolded in the snow to do it. And in my land- 
scape today there is old "King Lear," the euca- 
lyptus, that has stormed it through the years, and 
lives and triumphs still — what tree do you think 
of when your heart is light or when your heart is 
sad? 

The heart of a man, the soul of a woman, the 
love of a little child. 



ROSES AND RAIN 31 

The perfume of a dear and intimate garden, 
rising in the moonlight. 

The sound of clear water rushing over the 
rocks. 

The whispering of the wind in the leaves, and 
the silent companionship of noble trees. 

If you have known these things, you have 
known the best of life. 

What an inspiration it was — this idea of the 
Heroes' Grove we put into living execution here 
in San Francisco today. 

Monuments — the world is full of them — the 
Tag Mahal, the Tomb of Napoleon; and in an- 
other sense, that strange and touching shaft 
erected to the woman of genius whose stormy 
heart knew deep sorrow — ^just a plain shaft with 
a finger pointing upwards, and the inscription 
"Thou Knowest.'' 

The stone Will Davis set up to his wife, Jessie 
Bartlett Davis, who sang in "Robin Hood." 
Nothing inscribed there but the beginning of the 
song she melted into our very hearts in her 
day: 

"Oh, promise me that some day you and V — 



33 ROSES AND RAIN 

A thousand ideas expressed in a thousand 
ways, yearning, loving, remembering — ^but what 
can tell it all, the pride, the grief, the memory — 
like a noble tree ? 

The Grove of the Hero — what a glorious privi- 
lege to be one of those who sees the beginning of 
it today, here in our beloved city of Smiles and 
Tears — and Memories. 



ROSES AND RAIN 33 

ROMANCE. 

"Oh, "said the little mermaid, and she rose out 
of the deep, blue sea, and rocked in the cradle of 
the waves, and sang for joy." 

" Tieces of eight — pieces of eight !' screamed 
the parrot." 

"And there on the ground behind the rocks 
they lay — Davy Balfour and Allen Breck, and 
all the world was red with the scarlet coats of 
British soldiers." 

"Lorna Doone's eyes were like stars and her 
hair was black satin, and great John Ridd's heart 
turned to water when he looked at her." 

Every week in the year is Children's Book 
Week with me. 

How do people live — who don't love to read? 
I wonder, don't you? 

What a little, narrow, hopeless kind of world 
it must be when you have to live all the time with 
just the everyday people you meet, going down 
Market street or up Powell — or the same kind 
you are yourself, with your same kind of preju- 
dices and your same kind of limitations and your 



34 ROSES AND RAIN 

same kind of hopes and fears and funny little 
ambitions. 

Every once in a while, when I am so tired of 
thinking just exactly what I ought to think that 
I feel as if I were turning into a beet or a cabbage 
or something, I step to the bookcase, take down 
a book — and lo, the quiet room where I sit broad- 
ens at once to a great, broad moor — and I hide 
with Davy Balfour and run away with Allen 
Breck, and catch the gleam of the sunlight upon 
sharp swords — and for me, the wild sea breaks 
on Scotland's bleak shores and in my ears rings 
the old song of "Over the water to Charlie'' — 'tis 
a brave song and one well worth singing, mark 
me that. 

Or if my fancy turns in another direction, I sit 
with Lorna Doone on the edge of the falling 
water and watch John Ridd come struggling up 
the waterfall, with something for me in his great 
brown hands. 

Or perhaps, I take the road, the broad high- 
way, and go swaggering down it with Dennis of 
Burgundy, just to laugh aloud at his old battle 
cry: "Courage, my comrade, the devil is dead." 



ROSES AND RAIN 35 

Minnehaha is a fine companion of a fall evening 
by the light of a leaping fire. She tells me all 
about the painted children of the forest and how 
they live and love and hope and pray. 

How about Pip ? Last night I heard the guns 
at the fort or over at Alcatraz — I could not tell 
which — and we looked at each other and said: 
"Is it a prisoner escaping from the island ?" And 
then we took down "Great Expectations" from 
the shelf and read how the little, frightened boy 
met the convict stumbling up out of the mist on 
the English marshes, and how he promised to 
bring him by the first flash of dawn a file to loose 
the tyranny of the iron on his limping leg, and a 
pork pie to stay his stomach. 

Oh, that pork pie and the things that went with 
it — it made us so hungry to read of them that we 
made a raid on the ice chest and sat around the 
kitchen table and talked till midnight of our 
friends between the covers — all the gay, humor- 
ous, pathetic, human people that Dickens, the 
great magician, called into being. 

I wouldn't bring up a boy without introducing 
him to Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield. 



36 ROSES AND RAIN __^ 

That walk of David's up to London, don't your 
feet ache at the very thought of it? Little Nell — 
poor Joe — children's books — yes, and books for 
grown people, too. What a sad old world it must 
have been before Charles Dickens lived — and un- 
derstood the human heart. 

If I had a boy of ten or a girl of twelve, I'd 
start them in with "Pip" — and I'd carry them 
right through every syllable of Dickens, and I'd 
do it to give them human sympathy and human 
understanding and to make them get the zest of 
life, and to teach them to listen to what it is the 
waves say — and how the wind talks down the 
chimney on a winter's night. 

And after that, I'd take up Stevenson. A boy 
isn't really a boy till he's read "Treasure Island" 
— and then would come "Lorna Doone," and then 
— but who could mention even a fifth of all the 
wonderful books there are for children, these 
days? 

Fairy stories — why they're a part of the sun- 
shine and the starlight — a part of the sighing of 
the wind in the leaves, a part of the dew and the 
freshness of the morning. 



ROSES AND RAIN 37 

What would you give to feel just once again 
the thrill that shook you from head to foot when 
you crept softly to the window of a moonlight 
night and held your breath while you looked to 
see if you couldn't catch the fairies dancing in 
the little toadstool ring — you knew they danced 
there for there were the toadstools, as plain as 
plain, and everybody knows what toadstools mean 
— oh, if you could only catch the little fiddler in 
his green coat and snatch his scarlet cap from off 
his head, and be invisible whenever you wanted 
to be. 

Those great stones in the garden — if you could 
only lift one of them, you knew you'd find a broad 
stair leading down and down. 

Children's books — why they are the pass-word 
into the world of imagination. What poor, little, 
starved minds they have — the children who have 
never learned the secret of the magic pass-word 
into the world of books. 



38 ROSES AND RAIN 

MY NEIGHBOR HAS GONE AWAY. 

There's a wreath of pink roses on my neigh- 
bor's door today. 

And in the light breeze that tops the hill there's 
a flutter of rose colored tulle— and so I know that 
my neighbor has gone away and that I shall never 
see her again. 

I did not know her at all — not to speak to her. 

But I saw her going in and out of her pretty 
home, and sometimes I heard her voice and her 
laughter in her beautiful garden. 

We both looked every morning out on the 
splendor of the bay, now silver like a gleaming 
shield and now as blue as a wreath of violets, and 
again veiled in soft mist of hyacinth and pearl. 

We both saw the tall ships sailing proudly out 
to the Gate and from the windows of her house, 
as well as from mine, we could watch the clouds 
form on old Tamalpais and float down into the 
valleys below like a calm and soothing message 
from above. 

Telegraph Hill was ours together — too — and 
the gleaming, flashing light on Alcatraz — and in 



ROSES AND RAIN 39 

the Spring when the white jasmine stars the old 
wall of the Carmelite convent on the corner, the 
perfume of it drifted first into her garden and 
then down the hill to mine. 

The new lights that shine from the top of the 
island of Yerba Buena cast their reflection over 
the hill alike for us both, and when the sun set in 
the west from her garden she must have seen the 
strange afterglow that bathed all the glory of the 
city and that made the houses at the top of Rus- 
sian Hill look like castles in some ancient fairy 
tale. 

The brown and yellow butterflies and the gay 
little humming birds that were like living jewels 
winged in gauze came from her garden into mine 
and flew back again across the wall in friendly 
fashion, and sometimes the birds drank from her 
bird fountain, and sometimes they chose to slake 
their thirst in the little drinking place weVe made 
for them in our smaller and more unpretentious 
little garden — and the winds sang in from the 
sea, and from below the songs of the brown fish- 
erman rose from the low wharf, and all of us in 



40 ROSES AND RAIN 

the favored neighborhood could listen and be 
glad. 

But my neighbor and I never leaned across the 
garden wall and talked of these things together. 

You see, we had never been introduced, and, 
of course, it wouldn't have done — would it ? 

And yet so often IVe wondered about her — 
what sort of thoughts she had and whether she 
loved the world and the beauty of it, or whether 
she was sometimes like some of the rest of us, a 
little tired, and would be glad, or at least not 
sorry, when the message came for her to lay down 
whatever work it was she chose to do, and go 
away on a long, long journey — all alone. 

And now she's gone, and I can never ask her, 
can I? 

And if she had any pain or suffering, as who 
of us has not, in some fashion or other, I can not 
do my humble best to help her a little. 

I wonder if she knew she was going away, and 
if she was afraid — just a little. 

It is such a strange journey we must all take 
into the dark, so mysterious, so unknown — does 



ROSES AND RAIN 41 

any one of us face it with quite a courageous and 
dauntless heart? 

Once when I was very ill and they all thought 
I was not going to get well, I heard, somehow, 
something that was like the rushing of a great 
river. 

Wild and stormy, yet steady and resistless, it 
rose and swept by close, ah, close at hand. 

Sometimes it was nearer — and I could almost 
feel the fleck of the foam of it upon my face. 

Sometimes it was not so loud, and then the 
nurse and the doctor smiled at each other, and 
one morning I awoke and I had not heard the 
river rushing by all night — and I knew I was not 
going away — ^just yet. 

And I didn't know just then whether I was 
glad or sorry. 

I wonder if my neighbor heard the river go 
rushing by, and if she knew what it meant when 
she heard it. 

This morning there was a letter in the mail 
from a prisoner who is locked up in a cell in a 
great and frowning prison. 



42 ROSES AND RAIN 

He has done wrong and he deserves his prison 
— but somehow I'm very sorry for him, and I 
wish there was some way I could help to let him 
out and make him once again — free. 

How many of us are that, I wonder — really 
free? 

Are we not all prisoners of some sort — priso- 
ners of prejudice, prisoners of habit, prisoners of 
bitterness, prisoners of limitation — we live so 
close together, we human beings, poor, foolish, 
vain creatures that we are, and all the time we 
are so far, so cruelly far apart. 

Where is my beautiful neighbor today, I won- 
der — the woman with the garden and the flowers 
and the splendid view? 

Do we look to her, all of us, like prisoners shut 
up in the relentless confinement, not only of the 
human body, but of the human mind, and does 
she smile to feel herself at last — quite free ? 

How strange it all is — this little, mixed, mud- 
dled, confused life we lead here in this mixed, 
muddled and confused world. Will there come a 
day to each of us when it will all straighten out 
and be clear and plain and easy to understand, 



ROSES AND RAIN 43 

and will we be amazed when we remember how 
blind and how dumb and how helpless we all al- 
lowed ourselves to be? 

My neighbor has gone away — on a long, long 
journey. 

I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye to 
her across the garden wall — before she went. 



44 ROSES AND RAIN 

YOUR DAY AND HIS. 

Poor Soul and Careless Love have gone to live 
in a brand new house, built in the age-old fashion 
for their kind. 

It's little, with a pointed roof, the new house, 
and it stands high on a tall pole in a quiet 
nook in the garden, and it has doors and 
windows just like a "sure-nuff" grown up house 
for "sure-nuff" grown up people. And there's a 
little balcony, if you please, and a tiny pergola, 
and right above the little new house sways the 
eucalyptus and below is a little garden of the old 
fashioned verbenas and phlox and fragrant mig- 
nonette — and altogether you'd think it was an 
ideal home — ^but, dear me, they don't want an 
ideal home at all — Poor Soul and Careless Love 
— they're modern, hopelessly modern, if they are 
just a pair of ring doves — "cushat dooes," they 
call them in the land o' the leal, across the water. 

There were four of then to begin with — So 
Long and Oo Long were the other pair, but they 
lived up to their name and flew away, and far 
and far — but Poor Soul didn't fly away. She 
and her little mate, Careless Love, were quite 



ROSES AND RAIN 45 

contented in the garden and they crooned and 
cooed and poor-oored and preened and strutted 
in quite the ring-dove fashion. And so the new 
house was made for them and painted and 
trimmed and into it they moved — as pleased as 
pigeons — and by and by, one morning, sure 
enough there was an egg, and the next day or so, 
another tgg. But Poor Soul didn't pay the faint- 
est attention to them. She wouldn't even look at 
the nest that Carless Love had worked so faith- 
fully to help her to make. And there they sit on 
their little balcony this very minute, poor-ooing 
and cooing like a dozen Irving Berlins in a brand 
new ragtime dove song. And the eggs are 
broken and there isn't going to be any little fam- 
ily in the dovecote — after all. 

And that isn't the worst of it. They've set a 
bad example, and what do you think? The 
canaries have gone out on strike and won't look 
at each other and I believe that Rin-tintin would 
sue for divorce this minute if he knew just how 
to go about it. And it's my private opinion that 
his mate, Oh-By-Jingo, has ideas of her own 



46 ROSES AND RAIN 

about economic independence and alimony, and 
all the rest of it. 

Rin-tintin is a widower. His mate was called 
Ninette, and what a gay little creature she was, 
but very domestic, too. She brought up her chil- 
dren in the finest canary bird fashion, but when 
she died and Oh-By-Jingo came to take her place 
all was not well in the canary cage. 

Rin-tintin likes his bath and plenty of it in the 
morning. 

Oh-By-Jingo wants hers at night, and she 
wouldn't mind in the least if she didn't have any 
at all. Rin-tintin likes pears ; Oh-By-Jingo has a 
fancy for apples and you can hear them arguing 
about it the minute the sun begins to shine 
through the weeping willow tree and tinges the 
scented jasmine with scarlet and gold. 

Whatever is the matter in the little garden? 
Is there no place in the world quiet enough and 
remote enough to keep out the modern spirit of 
restless discontent? How foolish you are. Poor 
Soul, to let those tggs get cold. Don't you know 
that some day you'll wish there were some little 
Poor Souls and Careless Loves in the dovecote? 



ROSES AND RAIN 47 

Wouldn't you like to teach them to fly, high and 
high, almost to the very clouds, and to come cir- 
cling home again at nightfall? 

Won't you ever get tired of just yourself and 
the pretty colors on your breast, and the graceful 
turn of your own head ? 

Fy, fy, Oh-By-Jingo, why are you so difficult 
and hard to please? Rin-tintin is a very good 
looking fellow, well preserved, too, for his years. 
Don't waste your time dreaming of impossible 
Romeos in impossible feathers of gold. Make 
up your mind to your lot. See how white the 
bells are hanging from the datura tree. How 
sweet the air is. Look, there's the blue bay be- 
yond. There's a good deal to talk about besides 
the proper time for a bath, and which is the best 
for the voice — a bit of apple or a slice of pear. 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven — hark, 
how the clock ticks in the house there. See how 
the sun wheels down the sky. It will soon be 
over, your little day, and his — ah, soon — why not 
make the best of it while it lasts? 

The best of it in the old simple fashion of love 
and home and children — of memory and of kindly 
friendship, too. 



48 ROSES AND RAIN 

THE MUSIC OF THE RAIN. 

"Hear the music of the rain on the roof and 
windowpane — falHng down, falling down!" 

Wasn't it glorious again after the long, sweet 
truce of sunshine and almost summer heat? 

Don Caesar de Bazan thinks so, and so does 
Lorna Doone. Who are they? Why, bless you, 
the trees in the garden, who else ? 

Don Caesar is the tall eucalyptus that stands 
and flourishes his myriad swords and makes 
them glitter in the light as if he defied all the 
world of trees to match him and them. 

Lorna Doone, who should she be but the wil- 
low, pray, the weeping willow, all soft curls and 
tender tendrils, and airs and graces, but some- 
thing sweet and gentle about her, too. And, oh, 
how the yellow acacia, the one we call Mistress 
Peggy, plumed herself and shook out her gar- 
ments, and promised a cloud of primrose per- 
fume in a day or so if these showers kept up. A 
fine rain, a glorious rain, and well apportioned, 
not sogging along all through the day, but rush- 
ing in at nightfall like a favorite guest sure of a 
rousing welcome. 



ROSES AND RAIN 49 

Was it your good fortune to be abroad late on 
Saturday afternoon homecoming from down the 
peninsula? It was mine, and that home-coming 
was worth a roll of bills or stack of silver a foot 
high, as far as joy and the zest of living is con- 
cerned. Up the street of the Ragged Kings — 
that's what they'd call that eucalyptus highway 
if they had it in Andalusia, where the names of 
things spring from the heart of the people. They 
say some there are who want to cut down that 
splendid procession of ragged grandeur and 
plant some neat, seemly tree to be more conven- 
tional. Away with them to the deepest dungeon ! 

Up and up, through the miles of violets, with 
round-faced girls and chubby boys standing by 
the highway vending sentiment and memory and 
sweet breath of old mother earth at lo cents a 
bunch. You pay $2 for that many violets in New 
York now and don't get them half so sweet, or 
anything like so fresh. Zim a zim, up past the 
golf links, with the players coming reluctantly in 
from the Lakeside course, the most beautiful 
links in the world, they say, who should know, as 



50 ROSES AND RAIN 

if they hated to leave the breath and the open 
and the broad green sweep of the fields and the 
cuddling close of the hills and the vigor and the 
beauty of it all, rain or no rain. 

Hola here's the wind, sweeping in from the 
sea. Tie your veil tight. No ordinary knot will 
do in this breeze. 

Hurrah, see the trees bend before it. 

Zim, whiz, up like a homecoming eagle to the 
town. 

Hurrah, the sea ! How the white horses of the 
surf trample and rear! Look, the gulls are fly- 
ing over the city, a sure sign of a storm, they say. 
There's the Cliff House, forlorn it is to see it 
silent and dark after so many years of jovial life. 

Hurrah, the great windmills along the beach, 
a fine night for them. They know what they 
were born for now, be sure of that. Turn sails 
and creak, old sinews of the wooden frame, this is 
your hour of use and homely faring. The park 
green and fair! What a park it is, to be sure, 
none like it on this earth, I do believe. Is it pos- 
sible that it was once a wind-swept sand dune, 
and that not so many years ago? The Panhan- 



ROSES AND RAIN 51 

die — what glorious trees — the town alight and 
agleam. Van Ness avenue — what a street of 
dignity and perspective. 

Some day when we plant some trees along it, 
either side, we'll have such a boulevard as all the 
world can never match. Not the Marina tonight. 
The storm rides too fast in the wild sky and we 
must make haste home. 

Zim a zim, up the hill. 

There's Alcatraz, ablaze with the welcoming 
eye of a devoted friend. Hurrah, home, and the 
first big drops splashing the pavement. 

What a fire on the hearth, lamb chops for din- 
ner, baked potatoes, too, and a crisp salad and a 
bit of good cheese with a cup of real coffee for a 
farewell kiss. What a dinner for a stormy night. 
Clear the cloth, light the shaded lamp, gather 
round the hearth. Now for an hour with Bold 
Barnaby on the wild downs of England — in the 
storm. 

Sleep, sweet, dear heart, there in the folding 
dark, where fresh wreaths lie in memory of the 
Day of All Souls. Sleep, sweet. Our deepest 
memories are with you in the storm. 



52 ROSES AND RAIN 

GONE— WHERE? 

The cage is opened — and the bird is gone. 

And we are all a little lonely at our house on 
the side of the hill, with the red and yellow Milli- 
ner's Flower trying to pretend that it is still sum- 
mer all along the edge of the porch and the little 
red and yellow button chrysanthemums making 
a gay show of themselves along the garden wall. 

I never cared much for birds in a cage, some- 
how. 

They always seemed to me such poor, arti- 
ficial, lonely, wistful things — always fluttering 
their poor useless wings and trying to act like 
real birds when all the time they are just forlorn 
prisoners, kept for the vagrant fancy and the 
passing whim of the one who hangs up the cage 
and expects the little feathered exile from sun- 
light and freedom to say: "Tweet" — whenever 
"tweet" is supposed to be the thing. 

But, somehow, this little fellow was different. 

I suppose they are all "different" to someone, 
when you come down to that. 



ROSES AND RAIN 53 

Hal was a present ; he was given to us by some- 
one who Hkes birds and loves dogs and is even 
fond of sly, hypocritical, elegant and pharasaical 
cats. 

We named him after a soldier boy, who wrote 
to us from a hospital in France — such a cheery 
letter, so full of courage and hope and gay good 
will to all the world. And little Hal proved 
worthy of his namesake. 

He was a canary, as yellow as a golden poppy, 
A bright spot of light in the room, and, oh, how 
he could sing, and how he did sing. 

In the morning, when we took his gay little 
red and white cage out and hung it in the sun Hal 
fairly burst his throat telling all the neighbors 
that he was out on the porch. 

He swung back and forth on his perch, like a 
regular acrobat. He laughed, oh, yes, he did, 
and he said "Hurrah for me,'' too, — you could 
hear him just as plain. That's when he first 
came. 

But after a while, when the birds in the garden 
began to answer him, Hal didn't quite know what 
to make of it. 



54 ROSES AND RAIN ^ 

The robins, yes, there were a few of them once 
in awhile, and the finch and the little twittering 
sparrows — these he seemed to feel were his 
friends and he answered them quite merrily, 
after the fashion of the born good fellow the 
world over. 

But the little brown bird who came late in the 
summer and called and called, all day long, high 
and clear and sweet: "Here I be'' — that was 
something that Hal didn't exactly know how to 
understand. Every time little "Here I Be" spoke 
up Hal put his head on one side and listened, and 
sometimes we thought he tried to answer back 
"Here I Be." 

One morning he did not answer. And when 
we went out to see what was the matter the door 
of the cage was open and little Hal was gone. 

We looked and looked and finally we found 
him — high up in the weeping willow tree. How 
did he ever learn to fly, I wonder ? And though 
we coaxed and called and hung his cage close by 
him on the tree, he would not listen and in the 
morning he was quite gone. 



ROSES AND RAIN 55 



I hope he's happy somewhere, poor httle Hal. 
I hope some of his bird friends will show him 
where to go for water and how to find his food. 
It's selfish to wish he was back in his little cage, 
isn't it — with all the blue sky and the bright sun- 
shine and the rustling leaves and the calling 
winds and the sweet sound of the sea upon the 

sand for his ? 

^ ^ ^ 

The little boy who lived with us in our little 
home is gone, too, and it is very lonely in our 
hearts without him. 

How selfish it is to wish to bring him back and 
lock up the eager brightness of his joyous soul in 
that restricted cage we call the human body. 

Fly on, free spirit. Do not linger here to 
share with us our sorrows and our grief, our lit- 
tle earthly hopes and fears and anxieties and 
disappointments. 

The door of the cage was opened for you. And 
we that love you would not for anything call 
you back and lock you up in it — again. 



56 ROSES AND RAIN 

GOODBYE. SWEET DAY. 

Grapes, pears, apples, prunes, red leaves and 
yellow, vines scarlet and crimson — pink hills 
crowned with purple eucalyptus, pine and cedar, 
green and green — purple prunes drying by the 
milHons in the orchard on the ground under the 
rich trees! 

White grapes, amber grapes, black grapes — 
apples, red and yellow and green, huge ones that 
are like the pictures you used to see in the seed 
catalogues. 

Tomatoes as red as the apple Paris gave to 
Helen of Troy — millions of them, miles of them. 
Corn yellowing in the tassel — the whole air frag- 
rant with fruit and rich with the perfume of such 
a marvelous plenty as has never been seen before, 
even here in California — that's a Sunday in the 
country almost anywhere right outside of San 
Francisco today. 

Nobody would believe it who hasn't seen it — 
the richness, the variety, the gorgeous generosity 
of it all. And the colors ; they are like something 
a really poetic futurist might imagine and try to 
put on canvas. 



ROSES AND RAIN 57 

If he did put them into a picture nobody would 
believe him, not even those who have seen the 
pink and purple hills and the yellow and scarlet 
of the grape vines that make the fields and the 
valleys and the hillsides look like gigantic pieces 
of some strange and rich embroidery. 

Even when you are looking at such a landscape 
it's hard to believe it is true. 

The full flavor, the careless plenty, the gor- 
geous color laid shade upon shade — it's almost 
past credence. Yet there it is, for us of blessed 
inheritance to see and to smell and to taste and 
to be grateful for — and at the end of the trip the 
blue bay of San Francisco, flecked as with foam 
with the white yachts and the funny little cozy 
houseboats. 

And then sunset — with all the windows of the 
city aflame, and Alcatraz illuminated as if for the 
feast of some mighty potentate, every window 
ablaze. The sun crimson and glorious sinking 
into a sea as blue as any sapphire ever set in dia- 
monds for the delight of any queen. 

What a season, what a country — no wonder 
the boats are jammed with motor cars, no wonder 



58 ROSES AND RAIN 



that to come up the peninsula these days at the 
week-end you must join a procession and be one 
of a parade. 

The Yerba Buena is drying in the autumn sun- 
light. Was there ever anything so sweet on 
earth as the perfume of it? Melt that with the 
fragrance of a million acres of grapes and count- 
less miles of apples and prunes and pears — and 
you swing a censor of odorous delight such as 
no high priest ever swung before any altar built 
by man. 

Sonoma, Napa, Marin — any one of these coun- 
ties a paradise of autumnal harvest. 

I saw some strawberries Saturday that came 
from a little half-acre that has brought its owner 
just exactly five hundred dollars in cool cash. 
Not so bad for a half-acre, is it ? 

And he didn't have to do the picking, either. 

Napa is giving a fair this week. Sebastopol 
will have a show of apples, such apples as Eve 
never even dreamed of — raisins, figs, walnuts, 
almonds, olives — though the olives didn't do very 
well this year. 

If you feel stingy and small and grudgy and 



ROSES AND RAIN _59 

envious of any man that lives, get a day off and 
run up or down or over into any of the great 
fruit counties and you will feel as rich as Croe- 
sus — for at least a week. 

Up in Sonoma yesterday I saw a little blue- 
eyed girl holding a cosset lamb in her arms and 
by her side ran a little boy. He held in his two 
chubby fists a great bunch of gorgeous flaming 
Tokays, the prettiest things that were ever grown 
on any bush, tree, shrub or vine on earth. He 
held them to the light and watched the glowing 
colors deepen and glow — then with a sudden little 
cry of childish ecstasy he laid his sunburned 
cheek to the grapes in an overwhelming impulse 
of love and gratitude and appreciation. 

I knew just how he felt. I would have liked to 
gather the whole perfume and beauty and gene- 
rosity of the California day into my arms as a 
mother gathers her beloved child, and hold it for 
my own forever. 

Goodbye, sweet day, farewell, oh, hours of 
golden fruitage and splendid harvest. Now that 
I have felt the savor of even just a few such 
hours I have not lived in vain. 



60 ROSES AND RAIN 

THE GREY VEIL 

The other day it rained, and rained, and 
rained some more. There was nothing to read, 
and the dog wasn't well and kept shivering, and 
the cat had a big tail and shut its eyes to slits, 
and looked as if she'd love to turn into a tiger 
and show us a few things. 

The postman didn't bring a letter, and some- 
thing happened to the cream, and the coffee 
wasn't quite right. 

"When would school ever open?" I asked the 
Middling. 

"Is the world really going to the dogs?" said 
the Sweetest Aunt in the world." "Hats are too 
dear for words, and as for winter coats!" — this 
from the Pretty Maid. 

It was a rather tiresome, wet, slushy world, all 
round, and all at once there came to me, unex- 
pectedly, a veil. 

Just a soft, fine, altogether beautiful grey veil, 
the very kind I'd been looking for and never 
could find — a pearl grey, like the inside of a shell 
before the pink begins, the mist grey of dawn, 
with a hint of the sunrise behind it. 



ROSES AND RAIN 61 

Clouds, sweet fragrant mist, the spray of the 
sea, yes, that's what that grey meant, and a 
friend had seen it, and she thought of me, and 
bought it, and sent it for an "unbirthday pres- 
ent," and it illumined the day like a burst of sun- 
shine streaming on a yellow acacia in full and 
fragrant bloom. 

How did she happen to do it, I wonder ? 

Did she notice that I was a little depressed the 
other day when I met her, and did she send the 
veil to say "never mind, I like you anyhow, if 
nobody else does ?" 

Or was she just in one of her generous, expen- 
sive moods when she had to give something nice 
to somebody or die on the spot of a rush of kind- 
ness to the heart ? 

Fve seen her go into her kitchen and bake a 
dozen pies in a mood like that, and run all over 
the neighborhood giving them away. 

IVe seen her call from her garden to a blind 
man who passes sometimes, and ask him what he 
thought of the peace terms, just to show him that 
she knew him and wanted to talk to him. 



62 ROSES AND RAIN 

Dogs? Why, she can't let a dog go by with- 
out a kind word, and as for children, every child 
in the neighborhood knows just how her cookies 
taste, and what she heard from Ambrose, the tall 
boy who is up at Camp Lewis, as cross as two 
sticks because he isn't going to France after all. 

Yet he is almost tickled to death to think that 
he's coming back to the hill soon. 

And if there's any one ill, or in trouble, she al- 
ways knows it, my neighbor of the grey veil, and 
she's there with a kind word and at exactly the 
right time, and a cup of cocoa or a bowl of soup. 

When the three pretty girls and their mother 
next door had the "flu" who nursed them but the 
good lady of the grey veil? 

And there they are, all together in their pretty 
homes, cuddled close like a litter of kittens, all 
friendly, all loving, all happy, my neighbor of the 
veil and her sisters. I wonder if they have the 
least idea what they, and such as they, mean to 
this lonesome, preoccupied, busy old world of 
ours? 

Soldiers, why, the hill is brown with them, 
coming and going to the house of my neighbor 



I 



ROSES AND RAIN 63 

of the grey veil. They all call her "Ma," and she 
calls them "son/' and never a whimper about her 
own boy, so far away, never a moan from her 
own anxious heart. Instead: 

"When did you hear from home? Won't 
mother be proud when you get there?'' 

All the wounded men know their way to the 
doorstep, and are comforted and cossetted and 
scolded and mothered. Oh, neighbor of the grey 
veil, I wish the world was full of your kind ! 

Maybe we'd all have gentle sisters-in-law, with 
big blue eyes and kind hearts, and kindly cousins, 
a house full of them, whenever we wanted them, 
and plenty to eat for all the world, and no hungry 
people anywhere, and no lonely little neglected 
children. 

But till that time comes I'm going to take a 
lesson from you, neighbor of the grey veil. 

I'm going to find my joy in the little, homely, 
kindly, friendly things. The flowers that grow 
by the wall, the trees that are so kindly with their 
shade and their fluttering leaves, like hands of 
friends waving to us. 



64 ROSES AND RAIN 

And the children, and the wind that blows, and 
the rain that falls, and all that is good and natu- 
ral and real, and forget all that is artificial and 
coM and calculating. 

Salute, neighbor of the grey veil, you're a real 
missionary — did you know it ? 

(1918) 



ROSES AND RAIN 65 

THE LITTLE BOY IN THE GARDEN. 

(1918) . 

Such a dear little boy. 

Such a chubby little roly-poly little, naughty 
little, good little boy. 

His face is as round as an apple and so are his 
eyes — and sometimes the eyes are full of dreams, 
and sometimes they dance with mischief. And 
he has a "cowlick" that won't stay combed and a 
mouthful of white teeth and red cheeks and 
sturdy, broad shoulders and chubby hands. 

And he hates to wash those hands and he can't 
for the life of him see why people make such a 
fuss about perfectly silly things like ears and the 
back of your neck and just the tiniest hole in the 
knee of your stocking — not a bit bigger than the 
palm of your hand, or, well, maybe the palm of 
both hands. But who's ever going to stop to no- • 
tice that? 

And he likes to play "One Old Cat," and 
"Andy Andy Over," and he loves to shoot mar- 
bles and he wouldn't carry those marbles in the 
neat bag that his mother made for him for that 



66 ROSES AND RAIN 

purpose — oh, not for anything. Nobody but 
"sissie" and "Mama's pets" carry marbles in a 
bag. And some day, when he grows up, he's go- 
ing to be an aviator and fly and fly — way over the 
sea and across the world to Africa, where the 
black people live and where the camels are just 
swell — and to Asia to see the white peacocks and 
hear them cry in the moonlight, and to South 
America to find diamonds — and his mother's go- 
ing with him. Of course, he isn't telling any of 
the kids about that. 

He didn't plan to take her at first, but there 
was something in her eyes when he told her, and 
he just threw his arms around her neck and whis- 
pered in his ridiculous, husky whisper that's 
louder than any speaking voice you ever heard, 
and said: "You, too. You're coming, too, 
mother." 

And that's a secret between them, and some- 
times when the aeroplanes fly very low over the 
little house where the dear little boy lives with 
his mother she looks up and watches them and 
makes big eyes and looks frightened. And no 
matter what the little boy is doing he runs to her 



ROSES AN D RAIN 67 

side and manages to touch her as he passes and 
his clear eyes are full of laughing mischief and 
deep, deep love. 

Sometimes, on cloudy days, the little boy plays 
in the basement and makes little aeroplanes of his 
own out of paper and wood — such neat, well 
made little things they are — so ship-shape and 
workmanlike — it looks almost as if they really 
could fly. 

On sunny days he plays in the garden a good 
deal when he's not out with "the kids." 

It is a large garden, full of old fashioned flow- 
ers, roses and phlox and fuchsias and nasturtiums 
and jasmine and in one corner there's a bed of 
mignonette and pink and white and red verbenas. 
And there's a little summer house in the corner 
of the garden — a pergola, they call it these days. 
But it is a summer house just the same, with a 
rough floor and a lattice and vines and a view. 
And sometimes the little boy plays there for 
hours, climbing the lattice sturdily, leaning out 
over the fence and watching oh, so intently, some 
ship in the bay below. 



68 ROSES AND RAIN 

When he does that his mother knows that he 
isn't a Httle boy at all. He's a sea captain in 
charge of a great ship, plowing the mighty deep, 
and there are pirates abroad and the captain is 
up night and day watching for them with tire- 
less vigilance. 

The rough haired sheep dog is with him many 
times. He never barks at the little boy as he does 
at other people — the sheep dog. He just lies 
down and looks at him affectionately and wags 
his tail and lifts his ears as if he were listening 
for some mysterious call from some mysterious 
master far away. 

And the strangest part of it all is that nobody 
ever sees the little boy any more — nobody but his 
mother, for he is gone on a long, long journey, 
so people think. 

But she knows better. Ah, how well she 
knows, how much better. 

And when people say to her, 'Tsn't it lonely 
here in the garden without the little boy?" the lit- 
tle boy's mother smiles and says very quietly: 



ROSES AND RAIN 6* 

"No, not SO lonely as you would think." 
And the rough English sheep dog comes and 
lays his head upon her knees and from far down 
in the garden the little boy's mother hears a 
sweet, clear voice singing the gay little song the 
little boy used to sing when other people could 
see him. And then people wonder that she likes 
to be alone in the garden sometimes and is never 
lonely there. 



'^ ROSES AND RAIN 

ITALY IN SAN FRANCISCO. 

Francesca, Beatrici, Giuseppe, Guido and 
Garibaldi were all at the Fiesta in Washington 
Park last night. 

So was grandma — and grandpa and Uncle 
Batiste and Great-Aunt Bianchi. 

And the Bacigalupis and the Podestas and the 
Onestis and all the rest of the Italians of San 
Francisco, whether they are rich and have gone 
down the peninsula and built themselves magnifi- 
cent homes with terraces that make you think of 
the Borghesi gardens in Rome, or whether they 
are bankers who prefer to live in town in grand 
houses as much like marble as possible, or 
whether they are the plain, every-day Italians 
who make North Beach the most interesting and 
picturesque part of San Francisco. 

If you have not been to the Fiesta in Washing- 
ton Square yet, then you do not know what a 
fiesta is and can be. 

I used to think that the only difference between 
a fiesta and a fete, and a fair was the way they 
were spelled — spend five minutes at the Italian 



ROSES AND RAIN ^ 

fiesta tonight and you'll never linger under that 
delusion again as long as you live. 

A fair comes from England and it is a decor- 
ous, perfectly respectable and rather dull affair 
by the time we Americans put the last touch of 
Yankee expression into it. 

The fiesta is as Latin as its name, and as full 
of fiin as a healthy three-year-old boy with a 
brand new pair of skates and a three-months-old 
puppy for a birthday present. 

People laugh at a fiesta — they only smile at 
a fair. 

They sing at a fiesta, too, and nobody has to 
work like a slave trying to make them do it. 

When you go to a fiesta you don't leave the 
children at home with the maid — ^bless you, no, 
you take the children along and the maid, too, 
and the maid's cousin up from the ranch at 
Fresno; and the Aunt Bianca down from the 
ranch in Sonoma, and there's eating and drink- 
ing and toasting and dancing, and always, and 
always there is light-hearted calling from one 
booth to another and racing from one place to 



J^ ROSES AND RAIN 

another and pushing and shouting — never such 
a good-natured crowd. 

Fishermen from the wharf, workmen from the 
shipyard, belles from lower Lombard street and 
Green and Vallejo. Black-eyed beauties in pur- 
ple and lavender after the immemorial fancy of 
their race. White teeth, quick smiles, supple 
wrists — ^how plain and stiff and stupid we Ameri- 
cans do seem in contrast. 

Even the old Satyr who sits contemplating 
himself by sunny day and by starry night at the 
round pool in the three-cornered park in Colum- 
bus avenue was en fete — last night. Some one 
had put a wreath of French marigold around 
his head, and not one child went past him in all 
that laughing throng who did not see and mark, 
with a gay cry of salutation — the decoration. 

Lights, music, laughter, friend calling to 
friend, Napoli saluting Firenzi, and Milano wav- 
ing a gay greeting to Roma, for was not this a 
celebration in honor of the unification of Italy? 

Italy the free, Italy the inspired, Italy the 
beautiful, Italy the magnificent — Italy the cradle 
of the culture of the world. 



ROSES AND RAIN 73 

THE BIRDS' SONG. 

We sat in the curve of the porch, as a child 
sits in the curve of a protecting arm — a Httle 
group of us from San Francisco — the other day. 

The eucalyptus on the ridge back of the house 
made a screen of green lace between us and the 
sky. 

The hills glowed like copper in the flooding 
sunshine. Old Tamalpais brooded in his purple 
cloak, and down below, in the valley, the little vil- 
lage lay like a pearl in the shell, lambent and full 
of changing lights, in the soft radiance of the 
setting sun. 

Of many things we talked, as friends do when 
-they gather for a little space, away from the 
every-day concerns of life, of dreams, and how 
they come true; of visions, and how they fade; 
of fortunes — told, and in the telling — and the 
strange freaks of Fate, the fortune teller; of old 
friends and new ones ; of old poems ; of old songs ; 
of haunting refrains ; and one told how her gar- 
den grew, and one what she did in the East this 
summer, now so lately passed, and how glad she 
was to get home again to California. 



74 ROSES AND RAIN 

And one will soon adventure on strange seas. 
I wonder when she will return, and how? 

Old houses we talked of, and the people who 
built them, and those who came and lived in them. 
Brides we discussed, and their veils, and their 
wedding wreaths. Mothers-in-law in general, 
and in particular, — these, too, came in for their 
share of attention. 

And then a little woman, with a gay, laughing 
face, and a pair of dreaming eyes that do not 
laugh, not even through their tears (was it the 
tears held back that made them shine so, those 
soft, mysterious eyes?) — spoke. 

"Birds are queer things," she said. "No, I 
don't mean parrots and canaries, and things you 
keep in a cage. I mean real birds, that live in 
the real outdoors." 

"Have you ever listened to them, early, early, 
just in that still, silvery hush that comes before 
the dawn ? I heard one the other morning, right 
outside the window, and what do you think he 
said, just as plain as plain could be ? 

" 'Mary'— just like that. 

" 'Mary,' as though he were calling someone. 



ROSES AND RAIN ^ 

"It was startling. I sat up in bed and listened 
to him. *Mary/ he said. *Mary/ so lonesome 
and sort of wistful. 

"My husband laughed, when I told him, but 
afterward he heard it too. 

"And in the evenirxg, just before sunset, when 
the little wind begins to blow, he comes and sits 
on the tree by the window and calls. 

" 'Mary,' he says, 'Mary.' Sometimes it almost 
makes me cry.'' 

And we all looked at her, and at each other, 
and laughed. 

But, when we were leaving, each of us stopped 
and said something very special to the woman 
with the gay, little face, who heard the bird 
call "Mary" in the silver dawn and in the rosy 
hour of sunset. 

For Mary is the name of her daughter, who 
has only been married six months or so, and has 
gone away to live. And Mary's mother is glad 
she's married and glad she's happy. She 
wouldn't have kept her at home for anything. 
But, when it is very still in the world, the little 
bird comes and calls: 



^6 ROSES AND RAIN 

"Mary" — over and over again, in a puzzled, 
wistful sort of way. 

Dear Mary, I wonder if that same bird will 
ever perch in the tree outside the window of her 
new home, where she is so happy with her de- 
voted husband, and when it does, what will it 
say? 

Will it repeat over and over, wistfully, the 
funny, little pet name Mary has always called her 
mother, ever since she was old enough to talk, 
and will Mary laugh to hear it — and when she 
laughs, will her happy eyes be full of puzzling 
tears ? 

I wonder. 



ROSES AND RAIN 77 

THE MESSAGE BY AIR. 

(1920) 

"The rose is red, the violet^s blue, 

Honey is sweet — and so are you." 

Isn't it strange to think of them way up there 
in the air, the CaHfornia posies. It's on the way 
now, you know, in one of the airship mails — a 
great box full of California flowers. Gone to 
New York to astonish the neighbors. 

I wonder what the Downtown Association 
people who sent the box with their compliments 
to New York put in it. 

Dahlias, I hope. They don't know what 
dahlias are, really, anywhere in the East — not 
compared to the great big, gorgeous, raggedy, 
gay colored rascals we raise here in the back 
yards and think nothing of it. 

You couldn't tell one of them from an imported 
chrysanthemum to save your life, only some of 
the dahlias are prettier. There's a striped thing 
— red and white, as big as a dinner plate, that's 
really too gay to be true. I always feel as if the 
florist had sat up all night painting them by hand 
when I see a bunch of them. And as for those 
gardens down the highway — talk about color 



'^ ROSES AND RAIN 

schemes — ^they're all color, gorgeous, rich, riot- 
ing, flaunting, eye-filling, heart-delighting color, 
without the hint of a ''scheme'' about them. 

Sweet peas — I hope they slipped a few of them 
in, just to make the New York florists open their 
eyes. Why, our sweet peas are as big as any 
two of such blossoms anywhere else on earth, and 
they haven't lost a bit of their delicacy or per- 
fume while they were growing, either. Roses — 
all kinds. They tell me we have a hundred and 
ten different varieties growing right here in the 
gardens of California, outdoors, with the sky and 
the wind and the fog for gardeners. I never 
could take time to count them myself. Fm always 
too busy being glad I'm alive when I get a 
glimpse of a real garden rose. 

They're twelve dollars a dozen in New York, 
you know — the roses we clip with a pair of gar- 
den scissors and hand over the fence to the new 
neighbor, just for a pleasant "good morning." 

Asters — I wonder if they didn't slip in a few 
of the gay, hopeful, joyous things. I always feel 
as if I heard someone singing — something with 
a trill in it and a lot of runs — ^high in a silvery 
soprano, whenever I see a big bunch of pink and 
blue and white and lavendar asters. 



ROSES AND RAIN 79 

I wish we could send some September weather 
by aeroplane, too, just these golden days that are 
ours, right now — every hour a blessing handed 
straight to us like a gift from a loved and loving- 
friend. Amber days, amber and sapphire — and, 
oh, the starlit beauty of the blue and silver nights. 

And just think — we'll have them now, right 
along, fairly up to Christmas, if our good old 
climate does the usual thing in the way of fall 
weather. 

When they're beginning to put in the winter 
coal and stuff up the double windows and hunt 
out the winter underwear we'll be filling up the 
tank and starting out for a little run to the green 
redwoods or through the tawny fields of October 
California — tawny with sunshine and purple and 
green and white with the ripe grapes and the 
bursting figs and the drying plums in the 
orchards. 

Let's put in a little of our optimism, too, in the 
next box of California flowers — some of our 
hope, some of our belief in humanity, some of 
our eager and earnest Americanism, some of the 
spirit of the old pioneer mothers— that spirit that 



)/ 



80 ROSES AND RAIN 

faced danger unafraid and knew not what it 
meant to cower before any living thing. 

Let's tuck in a Httle neighborly kindness, too, 
and some open-hearted charity and some friendly 
understanding. Oh, of course, they have these 
things in New York — that splendid city of pride- 
ful beauty and imperial luxury. But somehow 
they don't have the time or the room to cultivate 
them as we do here. 

The open hand, the generous heart, the loving 
sympathy of a true Californian — that heritage 
that is the very birthright, bred in the bone and 
born in the flesh of every real California man and 
woman. Let's send some of that, too, with our 
love and good wishes and many happy returns 
of the day to great, rich, powerful, magnificent, 
careless, ambitious, cold-hearted New York. 

And when the message and the gift has gone — 
let us every one of us here in San Francisco, look 
out upon the blue bay and mark again with new 
and deep appreciation the purple splendor of our 
guarding mountains, and lift up our hearts in a 
prayer of thanksgiving that we, too, are citizens 
of no mean city — and let's be thankful that we 
are alive — in California today. 



JSV. 



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